Come To The Feast

All things are ready, come to the feast!


"Then he said to me, "Write: 'Blessed are those who are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb!' " And he said to me, "These are the true sayings of God." Rev 19:9

"Then the master said to the servant, 'Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled." Luke 14:23

"And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost!" Luke 15:6

"No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day. It is written in the prophets, 'And they shall all be taught by God.' Therefore everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me." John 6:44-45; Isaiah 54:13

At the heart of Christianity is an invitation to the Lord’s feast. The Church is "not only for good people;" the invitation to be a part of it concerns everyone. At the Lord’s feast we must "participate fully" and with everyone; we can’t pick and choose. Christians can’t be content with simply being on the guest list – not participating fully is like not joining in.

First of all, the Christian life is an invitation: we only become Christians if we are invited." It is a "free invitation" from God to participate. You can’t pay to get into the feast: "either you are invited or you can’t come in." If "in our conscience we don’t have this certainty of being invited" then "we haven’t understood what a Christian is."

A Christian is one who is invited. Invited to what? To a shop? To take a walk? The Lord wants to tell us something more: You are invited to join in the feast, to the joy of being saved, to the joy of being redeemed, to the joy of sharing life with Christ. This is a joy! You are called to a party! A feast is a gathering of people who talk, laugh, celebrate, are happy together. I have never seen anyone party on their own. That would be boring, no? You have to party with others, with the family, with friends, with those who’ve been invited, as I was invited. Being Christian means belonging, belonging to this body, to the people that have been invited to the feast: this is Christian belonging."

The Church is not the Church only for good people. Do we want to describe who belongs to the Church, to this feast? The sinners. All of us sinners are invited. At this point there is a community that has diverse gifts: one has the gift of prophecy, another of ministry, who teaching. . . We all have qualities and strengths. But each of us brings to the feast a common gift. Each of us is called to participate fully in the feast. Christian existence cannot be understood without this participation. ‘I go to the feast, but I don’t go beyond the doorway, because I want to be only with the three or four people that I familiar with. . .’ You can’t do this in the Church! You either participate fully or you remain outside. You can’t pick and choose: the Church is for everyone, beginning with those I’ve already mentioned, the most marginalized. It is everyone’s Church!"

Jesus said some who were invited began to make excuses: "They don’t accept the invitation! They say ‘yes,’ but their actions say ‘no.’" These people, he said, "are Christians who are content to be on the guest list: chosen Christians." This is the Church: to enter into Christ is a grace; to enter into the Church is an invitation." And this right cannot be purchased. "To enter into the Church is to become part of a family, the community of Christ. To enter into Christ is to participate in all the virtues, the qualities that the Lord has given us in our service of one for the other. To enter into the Church means to be responsible for those things that the Lord asks of us." Ultimately, to enter into the Church is to enter into this People of God, in its journey towards eternity." No one is the Star of the Church: but we have ONE," Who Has Done Everything. God "is the Star!" We are His followers . . . and "he who does not follow Him is the one who excuses himself" and does not go to the feast:

The Lord is very generous. The Lord opens all doors. The Lord also understands those who say to Him, ‘No, Lord, I don’t want to go to you.’ He understands and is waiting for them, because He is merciful. But the Lord does not like those who say ‘yes’ and do the opposite; who pretend to thank Him for all the good things; who have good manners, but go their own way and do not follow the way of the Lord: those who always excuse themselves, those who do not know joy, who don’t experience the joy of belonging. Let us ask the Lord for this grace of understanding: how beautiful it is to be invited to the feast, how beautiful it is to take part in it and to share one’s qualities, how beautiful it is to be with Him and how wrong it is to dither between ‘yes’ and ‘no,’ to say ‘yes,’ but to be satisfied merely with being a nominal Christian.